How The US Armed Saddam Hussein With Chemical
Weapons

On
August 18, the New York Times carried a front-page story
headlined, ``Officers say U.S. aided Iraq despite the use of
gas''. Quoting anonymous US ``senior military officers'',
the NYT ``revealed'' that in the 1980s, the administration
of US President Ronald Reagan covertly provided ``critical
battle planning assistance at a time when American
intelligence knew that Iraqi commanders would employ
chemical weapons in waging the decisive battles of the
Iran-Iraq war''. The story made a brief splash in the
international media, then died.

While the August 18 NYT
article added new details about the extent of US military
collaboration with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein during
Iraq's 1980-88 war with Iran, it omitted the most outrageous
aspect of the scandal: not only did Washington turn a
blind-eye to the Hussein regime's repeated use of chemical
weapons against Iranian soldiers and Iraq's Kurdish
minority, but the US helped Iraq develop its chemical,
biological and nuclear weapons programs.

Nor did the NYT
dwell on the extreme cynicism and hypocrisy of the current
US administration's citing of those same terrible atrocities
-- which were disregarded at the time by Washington -- and
those same weapons programs -- which no longer exist,
having been dismantled and destroyed in the decade following
the 1991 Gulf War -- to justify a massive new war against
the people of Iraq.

A reader of the NYT article (or the
tens of thousands of other articles written after the latest
war drive against Iraq began in earnest soon after September
11) would have looked in vain for the fact that many of the
US politicians and ruling class pundits demanding war
against Hussein today -- in particular, the most bellicose
of the Bush administration's ``hawks'', defence secretary
Donald Rumsfeld -- were up to their ears in Washington's
efforts to cultivate, promote and excuse Hussein in the
past.

The NYT article read as though Washington's casual
disregard about the use of chemical weapons by Hussein's
dictatorship throughout the 1980s had never been reported
before. However, it was not the first time that ``Iraqgate''
-- as the scandal of US military and political support for
Hussein in the ‘80s has been dubbed -- has raised its
embarrassing head in the corporate media, only to be quickly
buried again.

One of the more comprehensive and damning
accounts of Iraqgate was written by Douglas Frantz and
Murray Waas and published in the February 23, 1992, Los
Angeles Times. Headlined, ``Bush secret effort helped Iraq
build its war machine'', the article reported that
``classified documents obtained by the LA Times show … a
long-secret pattern of personal efforts by [George Bush
senior] -- both as president and vice president -- to
support and placate the Iraqi dictator.''

Even William
Safire, the right-wing, war-mongering NYT columnist, on
December 7, 1992, felt compelled to write that, ``Iraqgate
is uniquely horrendous: a scandal about the systematic abuse
of power by misguided leaders of three democratic nations
[the US, Britain and Italy] to secretly finance the arms
buildup of a dictator''.

The background to Iraqgate was
the January 1979 popular uprising that overthrew the
cravenly pro-US Shah of Iran. The Iranian revolution
threatened US imperialism's domination of the strategic
oil-rich region. Other than Israel, Iran had long been
Washington's key ally in the Middle East.

Washington
immediately began to ``cast about for ways to undermine or
overthrow the Iranian revolution, or make up for the loss of
the Shah. Hussein's regime put up its hand. On September 22,
1980, Iraq launched an invasion of Iran. Throughout the
bloody eight-year-long war -- which cost at least 1 million
lives -- Washington backed Iraq.

As a 1990 report
prepared for the Pentagon by the Strategic Studies Institute
of the US War College admitted: ``Throughout the [Iran-Iraq]
war the United States practised a fairly benign policy
toward Iraq… [Washington and Baghdad] wanted to restore the
status quo ante … that prevailed before [the 1979 Iranian
revolution] began threatening the regional balance of power.
Khomeini's revolutionary appeal was anathema to both Baghdad
and Washington; hence they wanted to get rid of him. United
by a common interest … the [US] began to actively assist
Iraq.''

At first, as Iraqi forces seemed headed for
victory over Iran, official US policy was neutrality in the
conflict. Not only was Hussein doing Washington's dirty work
in the war with Iran, but the US rulers believed that Iraq
could be lured away from its close economic and military
relationship with the Soviet Union -- just as Egypt's
President Anwar Sadat had done in the 1970s.

In March
1981, US Secretary of State Alexander Haig excitedly told
the Senate foreign relations committee that Iraq was
concerned by ``the behaviour of Soviet imperialism in the
Middle Eastern region''. The Soviet government had refused
to deliver arms to Iraq as long as Baghdad continued its
military offensive against Iran. Moscow was also unhappy
with the Hussein's vicious repression of the Iraqi Communist
Party.

Washington's support (innocuously referred to as a
``tilt'' at the time) for Iraq became more open after Iran
succeeded in driving Iraqi forces from its territory in May
1982; in June, Iran went on the offensive against Iraq. The
US scrambled to stem Iraq's military setbacks. Washington
and its conservative Arab allies suddenly feared Iran might
even defeat Iraq, or at least cause the collapse of
Hussein's regime.

Using its allies in the Middle East,
Washington funnelled huge supplies of arms to Iraq.
Classified State Department cables uncovered by Frantz and
Waas described covert transfers of howitzers, helicopters,
bombs and other weapons to Baghdad in 1982-83 from Egypt,
Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Kuwait.

Howard Teicher, who
monitored Middle East policy at the US National Security
Council during the Reagan administration, told the February
23, 1992, LA Times: ``There was a conscious effort to
encourage third countries to ship US arms or acquiesce in
shipments after the fact. It was a policy of nods and
winks.''

According to Mark Phythian's 1997 book Arming
Iraq: How the US and Britain Secretly Built Saddam's War
Machine (Northeastern University Press), in 1983 Reagan
asked Italy's Prime Minister Guilo Andreotti to channel arms
to Iraq.

The January 1, 1984 Washington Post reported that
the US had ``informed friendly Persian Gulf nations that the
defeat of Iraq in the three-year-old war with Iran would be
‘contrary to US interests' and has made several moves to
prevent that result''.

Central to these ``moves'' was the
cementing of a military and political alliance with Saddam
Hussein's repressive regime, so as to build up Iraq as a
military counterweight to Iran. In 1982, the Reagan
administration removed Iraq from the State Department's list
of countries that allegedly supported terrorism. On December
19-20, 1983, Reagan dispatched his Middle East envoy --
none other than Donald Rumsfeld -- to Baghdad with a
hand-written offer of a resumption of diplomatic relations,
which had been severed during the 1967 Arab-Israel war. On
March 24, 1984, Rumsfeld was again in Baghdad.

On that
same day, the UPI wire service reported from the UN:
``Mustard gas laced with a nerve agent has been used on
Iranian soldiers … a team of UN experts has concluded …
Meanwhile, in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, US presidential
envoy Donald Rumsfeld held talks with foreign minister Tariq
Aziz.''

The day before, Iran had accused Iraq of poisoning
600 of its soldiers with mustard gas and Tabun nerve
gas.

There is no doubt that the US government knew Iraq
was using chemical weapons. On March 5, 1984, the State
Department had stated that ``available evidence indicates
that Iraq has used lethal chemical weapons''. The March 30,
1984, NYT reported that US intelligence officials has ``what
they believe to be incontrovertible evidence that Iraq has
used nerve gas in its war with Iran and has almost finished
extensive sites for mass producing the lethal chemical
warfare agent''.

However, consistent with the pattern
throughout the Iran-Iraq war and after, the use of these
internationally outlawed weapons was not considered
important enough by Rumsfeld and his political superiors to
halt Washington's blossoming love affair with Hussein.

The
March 29, 1984, NYT, reporting on the aftermath of
Rumsfeld's talks in Baghdad, stated that US officials had
pronounced ``themselves satisfied with relations between
Iraq and the US and suggest that normal diplomatic ties have
been restored in all but name''. In November 1984, the US
and Iraq officially restored diplomatic
relations.

According to Washington Post journalist Bob
Woodward, in a December 15, 1986 article, the CIA began to
secretly supply Iraq with intelligence in 1984 that was used
to ``calibrate'' mustard gas attacks on Iranian troops.
Beginning in early 1985, the CIA provided Iraq with ``data
from sensitive US satellite reconnaissance photography … to
assist Iraqi bombing raids''.

Iraqi chemical attacks on
Iranian troops -- and US assistance to Iraq -- continued
throughout the Iran-Iraq war. In a parallel program, the US
defence department also provided intelligence and
battle-planning assistance to Iraq.

The August 17, 2002
NYT reported that, according to ``senior military officers
with direct knowledge of the program'', even though ``senior
officials of the Reagan administration publicly condemned
Iraq's employment of mustard gas, sarin, VX and other
poisonous agents … President Reagan, vice president George
Bush [senior] and senior national security aides never
withdrew their support for the highly classified program in
which more than 60 officers of the Defense Intelligence
Agency (DIA) were secretly providing detailed information on
Iranian deployments, tactical planning for battles, plans
for air strikes and bomb-damage assessments for
Iraq.''

Retired DIA officer Rick Francona told the NYT
that Iraq's chemical weapons were used in the war's final
battle in early 1988, in which Iraqi forces retook the Fao
Peninsula from the Iranian army.

Another retired DIA
officer, Walter Lang, told the NYT that ``the use of gas on
the battlefield by the Iraqis was not a matter of deep
strategic concern''. What concerned the DIA, CIA and the
Reagan administration was that Iran not break through the
Fao Peninsula and spread the Islamic revolution to Kuwait
and Saudi Arabia.

Iraq's 1982 removal from Washington's
official list of states that support terrorism meant that
the Hussein regime was now eligible for US economic and
military aid, and was able to purchase advanced US
technology that could also be used for military
purposes.

Conventional military sales resumed in December
1982. In 1983, the Reagan administration approved the sale
of 60 Hughes helicopters to Iraq in 1983 ``for civilian
use''. However, as Phythian pointed out, these aircraft
could be ``weaponised'' within hours of delivery. Then US
Secretary of State George Schultz and commerce secretary
George Baldridge also lobbied for the delivery of Bell
helicopters equipped for ``crop spraying''. It is believed
that US-supplied choppers were used in the 1988 chemical
attack on the Kurdish village of Halabja, which killed 5000
people.

With the Reagan administration's connivance,
Baghdad immediately embarked on a massive militarisation
drive. This US-endorsed military spending spree began even
before Iraq was delisted as a terrorist state, when the US
commerce department approved the sale of Italian gas turbine
engines for Iraq's naval frigates.

Soon after, the US
agriculture department's Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC)
guaranteed to repay loans -- in the event of defaults by
Baghdad -- banks had made to Iraq to buy US-grown
commodities such as wheat and rice. Under this scheme, Iraq
had three years to repay the loans, and if it could not the
US taxpayers would have to cough up.

Washington offered
this aid initially to prevent Hussein's overthrow as the
Iraqi people began to complain about the food shortages
caused by the massive diversion of hard currency for the
purchase of weapons and ammunition. The loan guarantees
amounted to a massive US subsidy that allowed Hussein to
launch his overt and covert arms buildup, one result being
that the Iran-Iraq war entered a bloody five-year
stalemate.

By the end of 1983, US$402 million in
agriculture department loan guarantees for Iraq were
approved. In 1984, this increased to $503 million and
reached $1.1 billion in 1988. Between 1983 and 1990, CCC
loan guarantees freed up more than $5 billion. Some $2
billion in bad loans, plus interest, ended up having to be
covered by US taxpayers.

A similar taxpayer-funded, though
smaller scale, scam operated under the auspices of the
federal Export-Import Bank. In 1984, vice-president George
Bush senior personally intervened to ensure that the bank
guaranteed loans to Iraq of $500 million to build an oil
pipeline. Export-Import Bank loan guarantees grew from $35
million in 1985 to $267 million by 1990.

According to
William Blum, writing in the August 1998 issue of the
Progressive, Sam Gejdenson, chairperson of a Congressional
subcommittee investigating US exports to Iraq, disclosed
that from 1985 until 1990 ``the US government approved 771
licenses [only 39 were rejected] for the export to Iraq of
$1.5 billion worth of biological agents and high-tech
equipment with military application …

``The US spent
virtually an entire decade making sure that Saddam Hussein
had almost whatever he wanted… US export control policy was
directed by US foreign policy as formulated by the State
Department, and it was US foreign policy to assist the
regime of Saddam Hussein.''

A 1994 US Senate report
revealed that US companies were licenced by the commerce
department to export a ``witch's brew'' of biological and
chemical materials, including bacillus anthracis (which
causes anthrax) and clostridium botulinum (the source of
botulism). The American Type Culture Collection made 70
shipments of the anthrax bug and other pathogenic
agents.

The report also noted that US exports to Iraq
included the precursors to chemical warfare agents, plans
for chemical and biological warfare facilities and chemical
warhead filling equipment. US firms supplied advanced and
specialised computers, lasers, testing and analysing
equipment. Among the better-known companies were Hewlett
Packard, Unisys, Data General and Honeywell.

Billions of
dollars worth of raw materials, machinery and equipment,
missile technology and other ``dual-use'' items were also
supplied by West German, French, Italian, British, Swiss and
Austrian corporations, with the approval of their
governments (German firms even sold Iraq entire factories
capable of mass-producing poison gas). Much of this was
purchased with funds freed by the US CCC credits.

The
destination of much of this equipment was Saad 16, near
Mosul in northern Iraq. Western intelligence agencies had
long known that the sprawling complex was Iraq's main
ballistic missile development centre.

Blum reported that
Washington was fully aware of the likely use of this
material. In 1992, a US Senate committee learned that the
commerce department had deleted references to military
end-use from information it sent to Congress about 68 export
licences, worth more than $1 billion.

In 1986, the US
defence department's deputy undersecretary for trade
security, Stephen Bryen, had objected to the export of an
advanced computer, similar to those used in the US missile
program, to Saad 16 because ``of the high likelihood of
military end use''. The state and commerce departments
approved the sale without conditions.

In his book, The
Death Lobby: How the West Armed Iraq, Kenneth Timmerman
points out that several US agencies were supposed to review
US exports that may be detrimental to US ``national
security''. However, the commerce department often did not
submit exports to Hussein's Iraq for review or approved them
despite objections from other government departments.

On
March 16, 1988, Iraqi forces launched a poison gas attack on
the Iraqi Kurdish village of Halabja, killing 5000 people.
While that attack is today being touted by senior US
officials as one of the main reasons why Hussein must now be
``taken out'', at the time Washington's response to the
atrocity was much more relaxed.

Just four months later,
Washington stood by as the US giant Bechtel corporation won
the contract to build a huge petrochemical plant that would
give the Hussein regime the capacity to generate chemical
weapons.

On September 8, 1988, the US Senate passed the
Prevention of Genocide Act, which would have imposed
sanctions on the Hussein regime. Immediately, the Reagan
administration announced its opposition to the bill, calling
it ``premature''. The White House used its influence to
stall the bill in the House of Representatives. When
Congress did eventually pass the bill, the White House did
not implement it.

Washington's political, military and
economic sweetheart deals with the Iraqi dictator came under
even more stress when, in August 1989, FBI agents raided the
Atlanta branch of the Rome-based Banca Nazionale del Lavoro
(BNL) and uncovered massive fraud involving the CCC loan
guarantee scheme and billions of dollars worth of
unauthorised ``off-the-books'' loans to Iraq.

BNL Atlanta
manager Chris Drougal had used the CCC program to underwrite
programs that had nothing to do with agricultural exports.
Using this covert set-up, Hussein's regime tried to buy the
most hard-to-get components for its nuclear weapons and
missile programs on the black market.

Russ Baker, writing
in the March/April 1993 Columbia Journalism Review, noted:
``Elements of the US government almost certainly knew that
Drougal was funnelling US-backed loans -- into dual-use
technology and outright military technology. The British
government was fully aware of the operations of
Matrix-Churchill, a British firm with an Ohio branch, which
was not only at the centre of the Iraqi procurement network
but was also funded by BNL Atlanta... It would be later
alleged by bank executives that the Italian government, long
a close US ally as well as BNL's ultimate owner, had
knowledge of BNL's loan diversions.''

Yet, even the public
outrage generated by the Halabja massacre and the widening
BNL scandal did not cool Washington's ardour towards
Hussein's Iraq.

On October 2, 1989, US President George
Bush senior signed the top-secret National Security Decision
26, which declared: ``Normal relations between the US and
Iraq would serve our long-term interests and promote
stability in both the Gulf and the Middle East. The US
should propose economic and political incentives for Iraq to
moderate its behaviour and increase our influence with
Iraq... We should pursue, and seek to facilitate,
opportunities for US firms to participate in the
reconstruction of the Iraqi economy.''

As public and
congressional pressure mounted on the US Agriculture
Department to end Iraq's access to CCC loan guarantees,
Secretary of State James Baker -- armed with NSD 26 --
personally insisted that agriculture secretary Clayton
Yeutter drop his opposition to their continuation.

In
November 1989, Bush senior approved $1 billion in loan
guarantees for Iraq in 1990. In April 1990, more revelations
about the BNL scandal had again pushed the department of
agriculture to the verge of halting Iraq's CCC loan
guarantees. On May 18, national security adviser Scowcroft
personally intervened to ensure the delivery of the first
$500 million tranche of the CCC subsidy for
1990.

According to Frantz and Waas' February 23, 1992, LA
Times article, in July 1990 ``officials at the National
Security Council and the State Department were pushing to
deliver the second installment of the $1 billion in loan
guarantees, despite the looming crisis in the region and
evidence that Iraq had used the aid illegally to help
finance a secret arms procurement network to obtain
technology for its nuclear weapons and ballistic-missile
program''.

>From July 18 to August 1, 1990, Bush senior's
administration approved $4.8 million in advanced technology
sales to Iraq. The end-users included Saad 16 and the Iraqi
ministry of industry and military industrialisation. On
August 1, $695,000 worth of advanced data transmission
devices were approved.

``Only on August 2, 1990, did the
agriculture department officially suspend the [CCC loan]
guarantees to Iraq -- the same day that Hussein's tanks and
troops swept into Kuwait'', noted Frantz and Waas.

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